


Grateful to Be Loving You

by speckledsolanaceae



Series: Seeing You Through Different Times [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Anal Sex, Anxiety Disorder, Bodyswap, Growing Up Together, M/M, Marriage, Slice of Life, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26227606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckledsolanaceae/pseuds/speckledsolanaceae
Summary: After nine years of learning what love is, Jeno goes back in time and remembers just how wonderful Jaemin has always been.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Series: Seeing You Through Different Times [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904878
Comments: 40
Kudos: 188





	Grateful to Be Loving You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angstonly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstonly/gifts).



> This is a very different tone and speed than "Waking Up Wrong," which is why it's not an epilogue, but a separate fic. This is a _feelings_ fic, so it's not quite breezy, but damn if there's not a lot of love in here.
> 
> If you don't want to read "Waking Up Wrong," the basic premise is that twenty-two-year-old Jeno swaps bodies with his thirty-one-year-old self and learns that he's married to his best friend. After returning to his own time, he asks Jaemin out.
> 
> This fic proceeds from that point.
> 
> Finally, happy birthday Jac! I'm hoping you get the email just before midnight ♡ You deserve so much love, darling, and I hope you enjoy!

Over time, the morning Jeno woke up in the body of his older self fades into background noise. He never tells Jaemin what occurred because there was no apparent evidence that Jaemin suspected anything was amiss. How is he meant to explain something as surreal as pseudo-time travel, which he doesn’t want to replicate even if possible? If anything, at risk of concluding that he had a sanity lapse, he _chooses_ to forget about it.

Besides. There are much more fulfilling things than time travel, in Jeno’s opinion. Such as really, truly falling in love.

It’s a peculiar thing, because he _thought_ he was in love back when it felt unrequited. It stirred softly and yawned big in his chest, permeated every touch he gave and sank into him with each breath, but mutuality is something else entirely.

It’s fizzy and too big for his body in a way that makes him feel like he’s reaching every corner of the room instead of shrinking in quiet caution. It’s massive, wild, warm. 

It’s a skill, is what Jeno learns over the years. Loving takes practice, and then it is honed until it’s no longer clumsy and wild but moldable, flexible, and just what it needs to be.

“You buy strawberry ice cream to hurt my feelings,” Jaemin accuses one day, peering past the open grocery bag right into Jeno’s face. It takes the breath out of him in the form of a laugh.

“Yes, I do,” Jeno says, and watches the turmoil break in Jaemin’s face from a pout to abject misery. “You won’t steal my desserts this way,” Jeno defends warmly, cutting around the tiny kitchen table to collect Jaemin in his arms. “I bought you other things.”

They’ve been roommates for a year, now—there’s no reason not to be after Donghyuck told Jeno that if he didn’t move out he’d burn his sheets (“Saying ‘get a room’ gets _old,”_ he insisted.). Jeno can’t be happier with this arrangement. Donghyuck and he are still friends. It’s no sweat off their backs.

“But I want your things,” Jaemin protests, pressing his face into Jeno’s neck, and now he’s just saying whatever because he’s in a mood (Jeno-inflicted).

Jeno nips his ear, and the situation flips as fast as that. Jaemin pushes at his hips, Jeno makes a sound halfway to laughter, and Jaemin has him pressed up against the edge of the table, the wood digging into his ass and making a fool out of his tailbone.

The pout still in Jaemin’s face has that histrionic sheen of being just an act, further enforced by how he reaches up Jeno’s shirt, tweaks a nipple to teach him a lesson, then starts to laugh as Jeno slaps his arm away and grabs his neck to crane him closer.

“You _know_ I love you,” Jeno says fiercely, because suddenly the emotion has become overwhelming. He reaches for a kiss, pressing into him, and Jaemin hums, so warm and bright against him.

The kiss breaks and Jaemin shifts his weight off of him, patting his hip. Jeno tingles all over, but it’s fine. “I know,” Jaemin says, and begins to rummage and sort through the rest of the bags as Jeno attempts to catch his breath.

* * *

They graduate together through sheer willpower alone even though academia wanted to fuck up their schedule some three consecutive times. But Jeno’s there to fix Jaemin’s cap, and Jaemin’s there to fix Jeno’s tie, and that’s that. They've made it. 

Jaemin has a job lined up and Jeno will be sliding right into his doctorate studies with his grants and a scholarship locked in. It feels perfect for a moment as their handful of friends hold up their banners and their parents snap pictures. It doesn’t occur to them to take them separately except for the two small family photos.

“When are you getting married?” Yeeun says for the hundredth time after Jaemin whisks away to accept a candy bouquet.

It wasn’t a possibility before. Being married as an undergrad when they’ve only been together for a year and a half seems insane, even if it also seems _right._

“Later,” Jeno supposes since he has nothing else to conclude, and Yeeun huffs a laugh.

* * *

He starts to mull it over. Privately, quietly in his own mind until he thinks he can talk about it without his hands shaking.

They still shake because no moment ever seems like the right moment. The changes they make to adjust to new patterns and new normals make it hard to find room for a question that already feels massive. By the time he gets around to it, they’re firmly twenty-three and it still feels too early.

“I have a question,” Jeno asks as he sits on the bed and Jaemin holds his face against the pillows in an attempt to bury himself in them.

“Yes,” Jaemin responds, and Jeno’s heart is deceived for a single moment. It skips. He breathes.

“Are you happy like this?” Jeno asks, and oh god. Oh god he worded it wrong.

Jaemin looks up, hair mussed and eyelashes sticking from exhaustion and the pillowcase. “Here? With you?” He looks lost for a moment, untethered. “I didn’t realize I stopped saying it, Jeno, I’m sorry. I adore you,” he says, and suddenly it’s all too much. 

Jeno starts to cry. His hands are shaking so badly that he can’t hide them except to press them under his arms. He feels like he’s making a mistake. Like he’s ruining something in active time.

“Oh god,” Jaemin mumbles as he reaches for him, shoving himself closer, “did you think I stopped loving you?” His features pinch in duress. “Jeno, baby, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that,” Jeno presses out, his voice squeezing through a thin gap at the back of his throat. His skin stings, somehow, under pressure and the heat of tears so rapid they don’t have a chance to blur his vision. The moment Jaemin engulfs him in a wiry hug, his voice breaks. “I’m really stressed.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. Stop that,” Jeno protests.

“Jeno—”

“Am I enough for you?”

_“Jeno.”_

“God, fuck, I’m doing this wrong.” He’s crying more, in earnest now, and Jaemin looks mortified in the seconds he takes to pull just enough away to scan Jeno’s face. He’s kissing his ear, breathing fluttery with a panic Jeno didn’t mean to induce.

“What’s _wrong,_ baby?” Jaemin pleads, petting his hands through Jeno’s hair and down his back. “What’s happening?”

“Have you thought about marrying me?” Jeno begs back, straight into Jaemin’s neck and holding so tightly to his waist and pressing between his shoulder blades so hard Jaemin cannot manage to pull away anymore.

Jaemin stills in his arms and Jeno tries desperately not to do something rash. Like run or suffocate himself against the skin of Jaemin’s neck or babble in an attempt to convince Jaemin that this entire conversation was a lapse in judgment.

“Of course I have,” Jaemin says, and his voice lifts itself to Jeno’s ear, soft but gritty in a painful chest tension. It stuns him, turns him rigid like a welded figurine. “Of _course_ I have,” Jaemin repeats, softer this time but with more power. “Is there anyone else but you? Is there anything I don’t want from you, Jeno?”

He’s said this before in more words, in a vulnerable moment at three a.m. on the last bus, empty except for themselves and the driver. _I worry, sometimes, that I want too much from you,_ he said.

_I’ll give you anything._

_And that scares me,_ Jaemin said, _because I want everything._

Since that moment, they’ve talked about it more, trying to sketch out boundaries: how to ask for permission, how to not rely on instinct so Jaemin’s anxiety doesn’t go into overdrive, how to communicate, how to ask for things and accept denial.

“Is that the future you’re looking at?” Jaemin kisses into his ear as Jeno rocks slowly down from an apocalyptic hysteria by his own standards. “I should have mentioned it. It’s just scary. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Jeno aches.

Jaemin nods.

“Yes, please, I want to marry you someday,” Jeno confirms desperately. He can’t make himself loosen the grip he has on Jaemin’s body, but Jaemin relaxes and seems to find comfort in his vice.

“Okay,” he says, and creates an embrace out of Jeno’s anxiety. “We’ll talk about it.”

They drift into a restless silence, and then a forced calm, and only then do they talk as Jeno lies down on the covers and shivers through the rest of his emotions. Jaemin drifts his fingers over Jeno’s abdomen and speaks to him like a friend and not someone who had a breakdown over the mere thought of destruction.

“I love you,” Jaemin reminds him by the end of it. “I would live with you forever.”

With the emotional thinness barely supporting Jeno, he ought to have cried from that, but all he manages is a shudder and a beg for Jaemin to smother him with his body.

When the tide passes, Jaemin kisses under his eye where, according to him, the angels have left their mark. “You can be so dramatic sometimes,” he says, gentle and firm and warm.

“I’ll get better,” Jeno promises.

“More words,” Jaemin tells him. “More words, less bottled-up stress, okay?”

Jeno nods and accepts the kiss to his mouth.

* * *

They definitely don’t get married, but they do talk about it. They talk about the logistics, the milestones they want to reach. They talk to each other’s parents, too, which is blessedly less nerve-wracking than it could have been in a different world and different era. Jaemin is earnestly more aggressive in reminding Jeno of his affections, which is unnecessary, but welcome. Jeno tries to return those affections in the way he knows how.

He finally brings Jaemin’s bike in to get repaired, for instance, which feels a little self-serving, but it’s quality time Jeno badly wants. He learns a few new recipes just to see Jaemin lose his shit cooing over him for making a meal. He gets him the good coffee from the other side of their area. He holds his hand and kisses him and kneads the knots in his neck. He just tries to show more affection in more ways in general, because that part of them started to fade. The revitalization of all of this wasn’t meant to be a result from their discussion—Jeno didn't intend it—but it is a result to their benefit.

* * *

And Jeno does get better. There are pressure points deep under his skin he never knew existed until life or Jaemin stumbles across them, and Jeno forces himself to confront the screaming chorus in his head. His whole life he’s been the even-keel one, and he still is incredibly consistent, but Jaemin is far more practiced at navigating his emotions. Far, _far_ more practiced at keeping his head when life throws him for a loop.

Jeno learns from him. It’s clumsy, amateurish learning, but he grows and he wonders what kind of person he would be without him.

“You would have been fine,” Jaemin says, amused as he washes their chopsticks in the sink. “You gotta remember that I’m not, like, perfect. You wouldn’t have been nothing without me. You would have become someone else, and you would have been kickass then, too, I bet.”

Jeno doesn’t mention that he doesn’t feel like this is a timeline where he’s kickass. He’s struggling a little too much to keep his head above water and a bit too attached to their plants to be “kickass.” “But I like who I am with you. I don’t care who I could’ve been.”

Jaemin looks up and smiles, small and warm. “Ditto,” he says. “But that’s not the point. I’m just saying you would have been great either way.”

He can’t argue with that. He doesn’t know how to.

* * *

Jaemin, too, gets better, but everything gets worse first, and the shit he puts himself through sometimes is painful to watch. Jeno changes in fits and bursts, then exists until the universe disturbs him. Jaemin’s process is slow and wrung-out, bleeding through the pages of his journal as he learns to suppress a developed compulsion to pull out his hair.

_Trichotillomania._

“Does it need to be medicated?” Jeno asks, worried as he brushes his fingers through Jaemin’s thinned locks. It’s always been soft. He loves Jaemin’s hair. Jaemin’s eyebrows, too, have taken a beating, and Jeno has gotten into the habit of kissing the sharp almost-stubble there.

“I just need therapy, I think,” Jaemin says. “I’m tearing myself apart.”

 _Literally,_ Jeno thinks.

Social work is another world entirely. Jaemin’s job is underfunded, rarely well-managed, deeply misunderstood, and full of trauma. Jeno has volunteered his services where volunteer-work is encouraged, and he’s seen enough (but he’ll continue to see more, always willing to support Jaemin).

“Then let’s get you to therapy,” Jeno says, and he says it with the voice that doesn’t invite discussion.

Jeno helps him shave his head to ease the anxiety Jaemin has developed over his appearance. He receives a lot of head rubs—how could he not?

His hair grows back eventually and not at all immediately. The therapy they find helps, and slowly, slowly, he improves.

* * *

Jaemin’s job doesn’t stop taking the soul out of him on bad days, though, and Jeno’s trying not to drown in the last months of his doctorate. There are so few ways to explain the entire experience aside from a small, abstracted hellscape with patches of fresh water and sunlight in the shape of friends, colleagues, and Jaemin. Jaemin, who goes minutes at a time staring at nothing, getting lost in his thoughts, and who thanks Jeno when he pulls him out of it all. Jaemin, who smiles so brightly and loves so liberally and teases in just the right doses to make life feel less than intolerable.

Even as Jeno’s trying to keep a running pace with his doctorate, steady but just fast enough not to bankrupt their futures, he loves Jaemin desperately.

* * *

After Jeno graduates for the final time at the age of just under twenty-six, they get married. Their families and friends hold an unofficial celebration that for all intents and purposes is effectively a pre-marital reception. After, Jeno and Jaemin travel to where it’s legal to get married just to achieve the highest demands of their emotional needs and segue straight into a very brief honeymoon of sorts. Jeno is gently obsessed with the ring on Jaemin’s finger.

“It’s a symbol of ownership,” Jaemin muses, and Jeno doesn’t really like that.

“How about a reminder,” Jeno suggests instead as the open window reminds them of the slow tides.

“Am I supposed to be forgetting you?” Jaemin teases, reaching out to grab Jeno’s left hand and pull it to his lips. “Like, ever?”

“I mean,” Jeno says, “you can. It happens. I forget about you sometimes.”

Delight claims Jaemin’s face. Jeno’s honesty has paid off for years, now. Jaemin is almost always delighted by him, and when he’s not, they talk, and then it’s alright if not great. “My mind is always moving,” Jaemin says. “You’re always there.”

“Thank you,” is all Jeno can think to say, focused in on the chapped warmth of Jaemin’s lips. It’s an honor.

* * *

The very moment Jeno lands a job that pays, they move out of their apartment, which has grown stagnant, stifling, and rife with stress. Jaemin shifts jobs in accommodation, slipping into an administrative role that carries a new brand of troubles while laying off the old ones.

Their new place is a rental, but it’s a house, and it’s so beautiful that Jeno gets lost in the shingles and the overgrown flower beds that they’ve committed to tending. It’s not a monetary investment, since it’s not theirs, but it’s an emotional one.

A milestone has been reached, and his skin feels too small for it.

He’s lucky, he thinks, that he’s traversing his most daunting dreams and aspirations with his best friend. Not only love is a skill, but so is commitment. Jeno is strong until the world rocks him, and at that point, it’s just Jaemin tiding him through with a passion Jeno really doesn’t want to live without.

* * *

Their life shifts into contentment like a slow, rhythmic pulse. Nearly everything fits. Life is hard and always will be, but it fits, and Jeno is deeply satisfied. 

Jaemin has always been happy when Jeno asks, never one to say that he’s unhappy if there’s anything he can find joy in, so Jeno’s learned to ask different questions. He’s grown accustomed to asking him if he feels peaceful or rested instead. 

At twenty-eight, when he asks Jaemin what his mind is up to as his restless nights and compulsions become hints of what they once were, a pattern of positive answers begins, settles, and stays. Jaemin is rested. He’s at peace. He’s okay.

Jeno breathes easier. 

Money’s manageable, their garden is great, politics are shit but they always are, and they’ve made more friends in the past handful of years who have changed their lives endlessly.

Jaemin is beautiful.

If Jeno thinks about it for long enough, it starts to hurt.

Jaemin has always, always moved like he’s making himself the best person he can be for every situation. His energy reserves are unfathomable, stretched out over so long that he naturally fits himself like a heart made for every empty chest cavity.

“All my life,” Jaemin confesses, “I’ve been loved.” His parents, his friends, his mentors, Jeno. “Where do I put all of this?” He gestures at himself, perfect in every way.

Jeno opens his arms for him because that’s where Jaemin should be for a healthy portion of the time. _Put it here,_ he doesn’t say. Because Jaemin already does.

* * *

It’s when they hit thirty-one that it begins to occur to Jeno that he should remember. That one, rusty, nearly-forgotten memory crawls back into his head and waves its hands at him, and he has to take it seriously to some degree because he doesn’t know where he would have ended up without it.

Their bedroom is decked with things Jeno recalls as familiar. Renjun’s painting is on the wall, there’s a book that itched at him once that he’s been trying to get through for years, and Jaemin…Jaemin has never looked better.

Jeno doesn’t remember being twenty-two precisely. It’s a year to him—specifically the one when he started dating Jaemin. It’s memorable in bite-sized pieces. Kissing Jaemin for the first time. Learning how to touch another person for the first time. Practicing how to love in a relationship that he wanted to change his life.

“Do you remember when we’d marathon _The Lord of the Rings?”_ Jeno asks over dinner one evening, some time after Jaemin’s birthday has passed.

Jaemin’s eyes glitter like fairy lights. “Yes, absolutely. You were obsessed with Hobbit holes.”

“I just think they’re nice,” Jeno says, and Jaemin laughs into a bite of noodles. He wants to take Jaemin up in his arms and let his heart swallow him—if that were a thing hearts could do.

“We should rewatch them, actually,” Jaemin proposes, reaching for more cilantro. “We haven’t done movie dates in a long time.”

Jeno should be listening, but he’s not, really, because—

“If you could say anything to yourself back when you were twenty-two,” Jeno begins, and the topic change startles Jaemin out of his reminiscing with a curious stare, “what would you say?”

Jaemin blinks at him. “Twenty-two? Like when we started dating?”

“Before I asked you out,” Jeno clarifies, and Jaemin looks down at his bowl, stalling by arranging the perfect bite of homemade japchae.

“I don’t know,” Jaemin tells his noodles. “You’re always the one who’s told me what I need to hear.”

It’s because Jaemin’s painfully hard on himself, and Jeno loves the dickens out of him. If anything fails, telling Jaemin that he’s beautiful, that the amount he gives is always enough and that he doesn’t have to do everything, always, all the time usually works.

“If you were kinder to yourself,” Jeno corrects, “what would you say?”

Jaemin stuffs his bite of noodles in his mouth and thinks so hard it comes through to his fingers, tapping on the scratched-up wood tabletop. “That it’s okay to be selfish,” Jaemin finally says after he's swallowed. “Because what I want is good and good for me and I’ll get it someday and be the happiest I’ve ever been.”

Jeno exhales slowly and feels the weight of his wedding ring on his finger. “And make other people happy too,” Jeno adds, and Jaemin looks up, eyes wide. “You make other people happy too. Not just me. Other people.”

The chopsticks in Jaemin’s fingers slip and he has to readjust them, but he’s speechless for a dozen seconds or more. When he speaks, it’s a little thick. “Thank you.” He picks up his glass of water and blinks a few times, and Jeno really, really wishes he were sitting next to him instead of across. He wants to rest his hand on his thigh or press himself against the slope of Jaemin’s neck and breathe for him. “I try.”

Jeno knows Jaemin tries, and he would say so, but he needs the air to relax. Jaemin looks like he’s on the brink of crying. He’s kept his hair long, lately, and it dips against his eyelashes as he swallows down a mouthful of water and refocuses on his food.

“I love you,” Jeno can’t help but say, and Jaemin’s smile around his bite is wobbly. He nods, and that’s enough.

* * *

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting five minutes.”

Jeno lies on the duvet of their bedroom, naked aside from the t-shirt he’s worn since coming home from work. His left leg is stretched out underneath him as he remains on his side, right leg hitched up and cheek only recently relocated from his bicep to his palm. Jaemin’s fully-clothed in leisure—that is, he’s wearing shorts and a ratty tee because it’s hot as fuck outside and home time is home time.

Jaemin narrows his eyes at him, scraping his gaze over Jeno’s bare crotch, the quiet amusement in Jeno's face, and finally the empty box and tiny bottle Jeno holds loosely in his right hand. It dawns on Jaemin suddenly, and his mouth twists a certain way. “Gross, Jeno.”

It’s a knee-jerk tease. He doesn’t mean it in a direct sense—they’ve talked about this before. Jeno doesn’t feel anxiety on a day-to-day basis, but there are certain things that freak him out, and not doing this part of the process before asking Jaemin to fuck him is a part of it.

Some of their friends don’t do this, and logically, as a PT, Jeno knows the rectum is functional enough to only require a thorough fingering in the shower, but what squicks him out just… _squicks him out._

“I’ll take a shower to do the rest,” Jeno assures him, watching with care and affection as Jaemin makes an uncomfortable movement of arousal while he grabs his lip balm from the bedside table.

“Some warning would’ve been nice,” Jaemin chides him, setting the little plastic pot on the covers so he can close the drawer, and Jeno gestures at his crotch.

“This was your warning.”

“What would you have done if I wasn’t up for it?” Jaemin says, the spark of banter catching in his eyes and making him sway just a little into the space that separates them. He sets a hand on Jeno’s bare ankle and rubs his fingers into the hairs of his leg. 

“Cried and fucked myself with a dildo in the bathroom,” Jeno says smoothly, stretching his right leg out further to prod Jaemin’s hip. He can feel his insides shift and it knocks the next breath out of him.

“Go, go,” Jaemin encourages upon spotting the change in Jeno’s expression, and Jeno crawls off the bed to slip away into their bathroom. “Light the candle while you shower.”

And though Jeno snorts, he does, in fact, light a candle.

There’s a sort of ritual to this kind of thing, too, as Jeno fingers himself under the warm shower stream, the chronically low-pressure water creating rivulets down his body instead of a spray. It’s been nine years that he’s been with Jaemin, and he’s probably been doing some facet of this portion of their sex life for six of them. It’s taken a long time to work up to this point—curating just how they like to have sex. It’s the project portion of what has otherwise been a fairly intuitive and easy process. They’ve had highs and lows, but they’ve also had these mysteries and kinks and fears all knotted up and carefully, carefully smoothed out until there’s just trust and fond ribbing.

Jaemin likes food play and being blindfolded. Jeno likes cockwarming and vibrators. Jaemin has sensitive fingers and toes. Jeno has a sensitive scalp and perineum. Jaemin hates getting hickies. Jeno’s allergic to latex. 

It’s taken a long time. 

He feels sufficiently clean by the time he drips out of the shower and towels himself off. Jeno bottoms semi-regularly, so he really can’t know for sure if this is the exact occasion that will trigger the time travel. Maybe it will never happen. Maybe at twenty-two, he really never did jump forward through time, but at this point, Jeno feels like it would be less surreal to have it happen to him again than to not have it happen at all.

What he finds in the bedroom is Jaemin reading Jeno’s book, still fully clothed and not at all some sultry minx waiting to fuck him to oblivion. He has to squint to make sure it really is his book, though he’s pretty damn sure that’s his husband being bare-minimum.

“I do all the work around here,” he teases flatly as he approaches the bed, though he’s no more an image of grace or sensuality. He’s toweling his hair and there’s like…four red lines up his side from where he scratched his ribs in the shower.

Jaemin chuckles a little, replaces Jeno’s book on the bedside, and drapes himself over the covers. “Sorry,” he says, “you gave me the impression I was topping.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to be a _dom,”_ Jeno protests as he kneels up onto the bed and flattens the towel half-heartedly over the duvet. They’ve never gone very hard in BDSM, content for now with their intimately-familiar quirks, but it’s fun to joke about. He got Jaemin skimming subspace _once_ when they used the blindfold and he edged him for so long that he cried, but that was a couple of years ago. “Strip.”

Jaemin laughs from his chest and decides to ignore his demands in favor of pushing him down against the pillows. The kiss Jeno gets on the mouth is a heady one, following a deep inhale against his skin and a playful nip to his chin. Jeno tugs on the hem of Jaemin’s shirt while Jaemin enjoys his lips, then his freshly-showered neck and pulling the damp strands of his hair, skating down in kisses until Jeno is forced to say, _“Jaemin.”_

That gets the shirt off, Jaemin pouting a little fondly from the scolding as he sits up and pulls it over his head, his hair falling into his eyes. “Pants?” Jeno ventures as Jaemin sits back on his calves and fixes his hair.

“Don’t feel like it,” Jaemin says, probably just because Jaemin likes when Jeno’s impatient and a little stressed from not getting what he wants. Pushing himself down Jeno’s body until he brackets his hips, Jaemin starts to wander his mouth below Jeno’s navel, watching him as Jeno feels a superficial indignance start to wind itself up in his chest.

Jaemin dips his tongue into Jeno’s belly-button and Jeno wrinkles his face in displeasure, which gets him a forehead in the abdomen and Jaemin’s laughter shucking down across his mildly-aroused dick. He can feel every trimmed hair being distressed by Jaemin’s exhales.

Hearing Jaemin laugh is enough to appease the insult, a prickle of warmth shifting in Jeno’s lungs, and he takes a moment to brush his fingers through Jaemin’s soft hair.

It’s a brief moment, though, and Jaemin pulls himself together with a fond hum to push Jeno’s legs apart. He starts on Jeno’s inner knee, left side, slowly working inward. Jeno relaxes against the sheets and enjoys the familiar foreplay—it’s an effective area to tease him and always has been, and Jaemin’s mouth is very, very practiced.

Jaemin thumbs at Jeno’s hip as he goes, teasing where his hair begins and, once he reaches mid-thigh, starts to bite and suck. It’s a preference—Jaemin doesn’t like receiving them, but Jeno’s learned that for himself, he almost gets downright disappointed if he’s neglected in this way. Jaemin’s always been fond of this particular craving of Jeno’s, so he just about always gets what he wants.

Counting the stinging points of where Jaemin has left his hickies and slowly getting himself a little worked up on his own accord, his hisses when Jaemin skims the very tip of his tongue across his perineum before starting on his right knee.

With his husband content to go slowly, by the time Jaemin’s making his first mark on his right thigh, Jeno’s getting restless. He’s pushed himself up onto his forearms as the nerves in his thighs send murmurs of pleasure curling in his lower belly. Jaemin huffs a laugh against his skin at the hint of desperation, and it’s…it’s really simple, but. Just, he—“I just want—”

Jaemin detaches and coos at the fretful flush in Jeno’s face, and Jeno scrubs the back of his own neck with his knuckles, lost for words now that Jaemin’s teasing him. With a kiss to the top of his thigh, Jaemin nudges Jeno’s right leg into a proper, open bend before pressing his lips right up against the crease at the edge of his crotch. He’s quick on the way down, choosing mercy over torture as he manages to scrape his teeth over Jeno’s taint.

It sounds like a noise of protest—the sound Jeno makes—but it’s only because his vocal chords tend to get confused when Jaemin’s stressing out the skin between his ass and his balls.

“Please,” he whispers for no precise purpose, then breaks into a shuddery gasp when Jaemin sucks on the skin there. Jeno flexes, ripping out a jerky exhale as Jaemin laughs and moves his hand up to brush up against his anus.

“You smell so nice,” Jaemin murmurs like it’s a novel thing for Jeno to be clean as fuck down there (it’s not—he has one major perfectionist quality and it’s keeping himself painfully clean).

“Yeah no shit,” Jeno barely manages, pun very much intended, and Jaemin chokes. His laughter this time is the kind of one where he properly loses it. His nails dig into Jeno’s thigh as he wheezes, and Jeno’s own laugh shudders out of his chest.

As Jaemin flattens himself against the duvet and cries around embarrassed giggles, Jeno tucks his leg and avoids clocking Jaemin in the head as he reaches for the bedside table for the lube and condoms.

 _“God,_ I love you,” says Jaemin into the bed covers and proffers his hand as Jeno grins to himself and uncaps the lid, setting one condom aside next to his own hip. He drizzles the lube cold across Jaemin’s fingers even as his husband stays face-down and recovering from the blow of a pun in bed.

“I love you too,” he says on impulse, brushing his fingers through Jaemin’s thick hair and across the back of his head. Jaemin’s not even fully on the bed, so it takes some obvious fumbling for him to push himself up using only one clean hand.

They rearrange, pulling the towel under Jeno’s ass and letting him get comfortable before Jaemin sits, still wearing pants and flagged just a little from their brief lapse. Jaemin slips his wet fingers down Jeno’s perineum back to his anus, and Jeno loses himself in the necessity. He ever so vaguely remembers the first time doing this with Jaemin, and the pleasure he’s able to experience from it now is far greater than their awkward, anxiety-ridden first time. Jeno had tapped out, actually, having never done it and failing to know just what would freak him out.

With his leg hitched over Jaemin’s shoulder and a recent history of having two of his own fingers up his ass, the process doesn’t take long—or it wouldn’t if Jaemin weren’t the person he is.

Jeno bites his tongue as Jaemin takes his sweet time getting knuckle deep at three fingers and stroking Jeno’s walls. “Your dick is _not_ big enough for this,” Jeno complains, and Jaemin hides a smile in Jeno’s knee. “You’re a pain.”

“‘Please fuck me, Nana’ would be a _lovely_ thing to hear right about now,” Jaemin croons, crooking petulantly right into Jeno’s prostate. It makes Jeno’s leg and cock jerk, and he expends the energy to create an expression of betrayal.

Again, Jaemin laughs and leans down to give a little kitten lick to Jeno’s shaft.

He’s too old for this.

No he’s not.

“Please fuck me, Nana,” he says because he already knows it does something funny in his chest, and he’s willing to swallow that feeling and own it. When Jaemin extracts his fingers and rids himself of the rest of his clothes with an ungraceful moment of leaving Jeno entirely empty, Jeno blushes. Jaemin’s mouth lifts into a smirk, and by the time Jaemin settles back onto the bed with the condom in his hand, Jeno has grabbed a pillow to put under his tailbone just to distract himself.

Jaemin crawls up over his body and brushes his lips from Jeno’s shoulder to his jaw, drifts over his ear, and down to his mouth. The little shiver it elicits from Jeno is welcome, and the kiss rocks him back into satisfaction.

When Jaemin aligns himself and begins to slide in, slicked up and covered while Jeno was preoccupied, it’s like the surface of a pond breaking, and it’s so fucking quick.

There are two good things about Jaemin taking his time that they both know. One is that Jeno’s perfectly loose enough to go right in, and the other is that Jeno’s been pushed into patience for so long that getting what he wants blows his goddamn mind.

He loses his breath at the peak of Jaemin’s stroke and reaches for the headboard to brace himself and prevent any further movement from knocking his head. The feeling of Jaemin inside him makes his stomach jolt with a heated excitement and satisfaction, and he blinks at the fuzzy ceiling as his breath begins to rise hot in his chest.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to lose himself in Jaemin just existing, so to take it a step further and have sex with him is like something fundamental in his soul piercing through his skin and gasping through his pores in pinpricks of light.

Jaemin holds his mouth against Jeno’s, breathing against his lips, and every time he rocks forward, his eyelashes grace Jeno’s cheekbones as pleasure floods him.

“You’re beautiful,” Jeno whispers to Jaemin after a shock of sparks from a prostate hit leaves his eyes.

Jaemin shudders a laugh, gripping Jeno’s hip. “Says you,” he manages, almost through his teeth for the pleasure and effort.

“I love you,” Jeno says, and Jaemin barely aborts a spasm that was maybe one tilting him toward the edge.

“I love _you,”_ Jaemin gasps, pushing himself an inch higher with his arms, but not stopping. Just searching Jeno’s face with blown-out pupils and a familiar shine that feels like home as he rocks forward and back in perfect rhythm, practiced precision. “I _love_ you, Lee Jeno.”

This is not news to him, but it makes him stretch and arch his back in pleased warmth, and the way it angles Jaemin’s next thrust makes Jeno release the headboard with a choked gasp.

Jaemin holds him there, looping one arm around the small of his back and his stomach rutting up against Jeno’s dick until everything under his navel is murmuring and he’s feeling the spots in his eyes collect in his mouth.

He climaxes quietly, always struggling to force himself to make sound, and Jaemin whines into his ear at the way he tightens around his cock. He strokes into him with a moan as his one arm shakes and the other grips Jeno like a lifeline.

Jaemin follows with his orgasm while Jeno’s still breathing down from his personal cascade of stardust. They lie in sweat and the uncomfortable press of the pillow on the arch of Jeno’s spine, the stickiness of Jeno’s spend, Jaemin’s softening cock. Everything feels light and warm for a time, though, burning softly down Jeno’s skin.

But they can’t stay like this. They really _are_ too old for waking up cum-crusted and stiff.

Jeno pushes himself away from the edge of sleep and prods his husband’s arm and shoulder until Jaemin sinks out of him slowly with a reflexive cringe. Jaemin sits up on his knees, looking a little like he’d rather fall to the side and let the springs make war with his bones, while Jeno slips himself to the side of the bed and gets onto his shaky legs.

The room has darkened, now, though it still shares in the slowly dimming light outside.

His legs are shot but his chest is full and his head is humming. He can hear Jaemin toss his condom as Jeno makes it to the bathroom and plucks a washcloth from the shelf above the toilet.

The water always takes five minutes to heat up, so he takes it cold and wipes himself down between his legs, and when Jaemin slinks up behind him and drowsily snuggles into a back hug, Jeno smiles and focuses on the cum strung up his abdomen.

“You’re affectionate tonight,” Jaemin says, and his voice is very, very warm and slow—like the syrup dregs at the bottom of boba tea.

They’ve been together a long time. To berate Jaemin with compliments during a bout of unexpected sex…it’s slightly more than usual for an average night, not that Jeno isn’t ordinarily affectionate.

“I just think you’re the best thing that’s happened to me,” Jeno says, folding the cloth over and turning in Jaemin’s hold.

His husband looks ruffled, but sated and comfortable in his skin, glowing just a little and visibly content in a way that makes Jeno ache.

Leaning against the sink to take some weight off his shaky legs, he wipes Jaemin’s soft cock gently as Jaemin holds his shoulders and watches in the dark, soft quiet.

When Jeno’s finished cleaning him, Jaemin steals a kiss against his cheek, right over his mole, and drifts to kiss him slowly, leisurely. He seems to memorize the swollen swell of Jeno’s lips and the sleepy tip of his tongue, the cooling heat of both their bodies.

When he pulls away, Jeno feels half asleep, but still smiles when Jaemin chuckles and takes the cloth out of his hands to set at the side of the sink.

They manage a cursory brush for their teeth, which is the most courtesy they’re willing to spare the people they’ll be the next morning, and only after that does Jaemin tug him back to bed. 

It takes Jeno a moment to remember his limbs.

He hits his shin on the bottom of the bed before getting all of his body on top of the mattress, and it’s only from Jaemin’s assistance that he gets even a single sheet over his naked ass.

“I’m going to feel it ‘n the morning,” Jeno mumbles into his pillow, and he can hear Jaemin shift as he wiggles under the covers and arranges his pillow just right. He’s got it flipped, probably, to avoid any sex residue, since Jeno used his pillow for his spine.

Jaemin gives a sleepy hum and reaches for the small of Jeno’s back, rubbing there softly before letting his hand fall.

Jeno closes his eyes and doesn’t even have to wish for sleep.

* * *

It’s the smell that makes him sure.

He wakes up slowly like his body rues the morning, and the sleep in his eyes won’t blink away until the scent of a hundred memories hits his sinuses.

 _Donghyuck,_ his brain tells him, and it’s so weird to smell him so close when he hasn’t met Donghyuck or hugged him in months. Everything around him smells of the mix between the two of them—Jeno and Donghyuck, college students, so very, very close (they still are, but never so physically close again).

 _Home,_ is the other word his brain gives him, and it’s such a strange, emotional word to apply to air he used to know and a friend who’s changed over nearly a decade and, when he opens his eyes, the blurry, blurry form of the love of his life being a lump on his old, shitty apartment bed.

It’s too much memory and emotion too suddenly and all at once.

He takes one inhale through his mouth of who he used to be, and the tears rush up before he can even think another thought.

Silently. He tries to cry silently. It nudges every bone of his rib cage as he crawls his hands over his face and takes slow, overwhelmed breaths.

Belatedly, as the back of his throat aches and his heart clings to its arteries, he realizes that he feels different. It’s so bizarre to be back in a body that hasn’t sorted everything out yet, crying at the drop of a hat because his hormones are still a tangled net.

And this bed he’s in is so fucking shitty. The sheets are old and the springs in the mattress can be felt right through the padding, and he’s still scrawny at twenty-two even though Jeno well remembers the effort he put in to be fit.

He’s just young.

Dragging in breath after measured breath, he is finally okay again in tears only—the rest of him is wrung out and tender.

He loves this apartment and the memories it holds, and he’s convinced that he could even love the one Jaemin and he got together too if he were to return to it now. The organs in his chest and the skin of his body remembers this place, knows it, feels at peace in it, breathes it, lives it, and takes it for granted like everything he’s ever had.

In retrospect, everything is great. Everything is all it ever needs to be, and he’s grateful.

His body remembers how tall the bedside table is when he reaches for his glasses, but fails to keep him from poking the corner of his eye. This body feels different—still his, but navigating it is an odd thing. As soon as he’s conscious of being someone he’s almost forgotten, his movements feel alien.

So he pokes himself in the corner of his eye and breathes out a chuckle of a swear.

The room that he blinks into focus is so, so familiar, and for a moment he’s almost swept away again.

With this different, weird, groggily upset but perfectly wonderful body, he swings out his legs, sits on the edge, and looks at Jaemin.

Jaemin, twenty-two and different, weird. Young.

Jeno presses his fingertips to his mouth, feeling his heart throb.

Oh, he loves him.

This body loves him and so does his soul.

The differences are so intimate to him, but the way Jaemin sleeps is still the same. His face goes slack and pouty even at thirty-one. He still drools. He still scrunches up in his covers and sheets.

It’s all the same. He’s still the same person.

Jeno rests himself to his feet, leaning on the bedside table and feeling the scrunch of endearment from seeing Jaemin so deep it almost hurts between his eyebrows.

Jaemin has the sheets curled up all the way to his chin, unshaven and sparse, lips sloped in a precious frown and just slightly parted, face shoved halfway into the pillow Jeno can almost smell he remembers it so well.

He wants to touch him, to wake him, to brush the hair back from where it’s tangled and tufted.

He tries to act like a boy would do and not a married man of thirty-one, but he lets himself think about what he could have done while he brushes his teeth and becomes human in the bathroom. Daydreaming is something he’s always entertained.

He wanted to kiss Jaemin’s cheek and tell him he loves him, and that’s always been the same. That daydream has run so deeply into his mind since he first started loving Jaemin that it’s all he ever wants to do—at twenty-two he wanted to do it, and at thirty-one, the only difference is that he _does._ And Jaemin’s used to it at all hours of the day. He’ll lean into it and chuckle low and turn his head to brush lips, or he’ll search for Jeno’s hand and squeeze.

Jeno removes his glasses and clutches the edge of the sink, letting his tears fall into the basin. His eyes burn.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispers. He always feels deeply, but these emotions rattle about on the surface like glass shattering along every nerve. How did he regulate his emotions again?

He hears the floor creak and he’s not sure he’s ready.

He’s not sure he’s ready to see Jaemin awake and sleepy and young. Before he finishes his degree. Before he needs therapy and finds peace. Before he learns how to love himself a little bit more.

Who did Jaemin used to be when Jeno had only known him for so long and was so deeply smitten? Over the years, he’s learned so much about who Jaemin is constantly becoming, but the least Jeno ever knew him was around now—around now, when Jaemin wouldn’t tell him everything and didn’t show that he had a crush even though he’ll always swear he was obvious.

“Jeno?” Jaemin calls, and Jeno swears his heart breaks.

He’s not sad. He’s not hurting. But he’s so, so, so deeply in love with every person his husband has ever been and this is too much for him.

“Hold on,” Jeno croaks, and god he sounds terrible—bad enough that he chokes around a gasp of a chuckle as his eyes drip like leaky faucets. He’s obviously post-pubescent right now, but his voice is creaky and bad in the mornings, and he’s endeared by his own body. This used to be him.

Jaemin softly knocks on the bathroom door, and Jeno never closed it, so it nudges open a little. “You’re up early,” Jaemin mumbles, and Jeno doesn’t know how he can face that groggy voice and bedhead hair and not tell him he’s beautiful.

“Yeah,” he whispers, and he must have given himself away because that weak of a response prompts Jaemin to push the door open the rest of the way.

“Oh—” Jaemin starts, and Jeno can see in his periphery how he lurches a little. Jeno continues to stare down at the barely in-focus knuckles of his hands wrapped around the edges of the sink. 

He lets Jaemin touch him and promptly shakes apart. 

“Oh, oh no, Jeno.” Jaemin slides his hand up Jeno’s far cheek and tilts him in for an embrace, and Jeno crumbles with his body following suit. “What happened?” Jaemin almost whines. “Did something happen? Is your family okay?”

Jeno tries to let it be just a hug—to not tip into Jaemin like he’s his, because he’s not. “I’m okay. They’re okay,” he gets out through the gravel and tears in his throat. Jaemin’s so warm and so different in his arms but still the same. “I think I had a nightmare.”

He didn’t. His whole life has been everything he could ever ask for, highs and lows and all. It’s complete and still becoming, growing, brightening. He regrets nothing.

Jaemin holds him tighter, and Jeno tries to be calm. He needs to steel himself so that when he looks Jaemin in the eyes, he doesn’t break down all over again.

“God, I’m sorry,” Jaemin murmurs. “I’ll fight it. It’s not allowed to touch you.”

Jeno breathes a laugh into the bare, knobby and thin shoulder of his best friend.

When he pulls back, tearless, and looks into Jaemin’s sleep-puffy face, it’s like he’s been seized by the lungs. But when Jaemin smiles big and bright and charming at Jeno, Jeno startles back into life, resisting every urge to touch his cheek and cradle his face and tell him that not only is he, Na Jaemin, the best thing to happen to him, Lee Jeno, but he may just be one of the best things to happen to the world.

 _I love you_ is on his lips, and he bites it back.

He’ll let the Jeno of twenty-two confess. He’ll respect that boundary and let Jaemin have the right person at the right time, not the right person at the wrong time.

Twenty-two-year-old Jeno did everything just right.

“Did you sleep well?” Jeno asks instead, and his throat is still narrow and aching, but he manages not to sound like roadkill.

“Mhm,” Jaemin says, hefting the weight of the focus off of Jeno and onto himself with a breezy willingness, and picks up his plastic bag of toiletries on top of the toilet top. “Your bed is comfortable.”

 _No it’s not,_ Jeno knows, fond. _You’re just in love with me._

Love, ever-changing, always different from one day to the next and always not quite as rich as it is in the next minute, hour, week, year.

“Did you drool?” Jeno prods, and god. If he doesn’t try to stifle the love in his voice, he’s going to sound sick.

“And if I did?” Jaemin says, smiling but embarrassed as he pulls out his toothbrush.

They fall into a conversation while freshening up that makes Jeno feel like he’s sinking into hot bathwater as the world settles quietly into evening. But it’s morning, and he’s here, and he didn’t expect how important this would feel to him.

And yet, he should have known.

Breakfast is a memory given shape—the taste of university. Cold leftovers and day-old rice and eggs gone wrong in the pan because neither of their hands have perfected their intentions yet.

The old television sits ready for them to resume their marathon, but they eat while leaning against the minimal countertop space. Jaemin shares his dream about hedgehogs as if to compensate for Jeno’s lie and brightens with every second as the sleep in his body sloughs away—dark hair, perfect eyebrows, long eyelashes, and an array of different laughs that sink into Jeno’s skin like sunshine.

And then the quiet falls as they clean up, Jaemin having always moved in loops, the brightness ebbing for a measured moonlight.

Jeno thinks, for a moment, about telling Jaemin what his thirty-one-year-old self will say someday about selfishness. 

He doesn’t.

He decides to believe that whatever he may choose to say or not say has already happened, and maybe that time is just a lovely jumble of moments rather than a straight line.

Jaemin will end up being who he is regardless of any meddling or secrets to life. Everything Jaemin is and will be is the result of being completely, utterly himself, and Jeno doesn’t have to assist him. Not in this moment. Not in these minutes that don’t belong to him.

In the meantime, the rhythm Jaemin establishes is one Jeno falls into like a habit, and it feels good even if Jaemin isn’t quite as in reach. It’s all familiar and something he used to know.

He drinks Jaemin in as his time runs out, this moment so brief for all he wants to take from it. Jaemin, dressed and settled into one corner of the couch, legs stretched out halfway, the spaces around his eyes not wrinkled even slightly, his wrists thin with a gangly, still ill-fitting youth that he wears so, so beautifully.

Jeno still craves to ask him questions, to try to fill in the spaces in Jaemin’s chest that he knows how to fill, but time takes care of all of it. Jaemin’s just right at every step of the way even as he struggles and founders and lifts himself up and learns.

 _I love you,_ Jeno’s heart aches.

“You know what bothers me about _Lord of the Rings?”_ Jaemin asks, and Jeno knows.

He aches, and aches, and aches, and desperately wants his husband.

_Is it the lack of women?_

“What?” Jeno humors.

“There're so many good female characters in here and the rest are men. But why not have more? Gandalf’s way past his prime—he’s not having any more children.”

With a shock, Jeno is forced to think of Gandalf having had any children at all.

“So why not have women wizards?” Jaemin continues, on a roll, caring about things again like he does every second of his life. Eyes glittering, lips worried between every pause, body still as his mind spins. “I—”

Jeno is yanked from the moment.

“—rt you?”

Jeno is staring at a tabletop. His tabletop. Theirs. It’s the table they bought and put together for their house at twenty-seven. The air is different and feels like home and his body is sore.

All of his breath leaves him at once.

Jaemin’s hand is in Jeno’s hair.

He can’t pull his glasses off fast enough.

He cries.

 _“Jeno,”_ Jaemin begs, distraught, and Jeno can hear his kitchen chair being pushed back.

Jeno holds a hand up as sobs begin to build up in his body and his heart hurts so badly he can’t breathe. “I’m here, I’m back, I’m thirty-one,” he chokes, sinking down against his arm as it rests on the tabletop, drowning in memories and feelings and so, so much care. “Just gi-ive me a second,” he pleads. “I need a second.”

He was treasuring every detail of that moment back in time, but it’s a stinging whiplash to be ripped from it. His heart shakes with the entire experience—with being faced with something so significant beyond any method of expression.

After several shudderingly insufficient, damp breaths, Jeno demands more composure from himself than this and pulls himself together, but only enough for him to push himself into a stand, shoving at his eyes, and reach for his husband. Just to hold him.

Some words will have to be sufficient, but for now, he’ll hold Jaemin and try to push all of this through his chest. He anchors himself by burying himself into Jaemin’s neck and knowing his unwashed skin; this old, loose shirt; the way he breathes in and out and cradles Jeno’s head, hugs around his shoulders.

“Baby,” Jaemin says, voice a little creaky, “you’re having a really hard time. I’m sorry.”

And that doesn’t _help._

Jaemin is wonderful. He’s home. He’s beautiful and wicked and clever and kind, and if Jeno could weave himself into his husband for permanence, he would.

“I love you,” Jeno says into his warm skin, and Jaemin doesn’t immediately say it back. He pets the back of Jeno’s head gently, stroking his hair, breathing in and out slowly even if it sounds tight and distressed, hugging him close as Jeno holds him firmly about the waist and ribs.

“I love you, too,” Jaemin says finally, and it’s a bit of a whisper. It settles Jeno like he’s being hushed. He remembers how to breathe.

When he pulls away, his vision isn’t so bad that he can’t see the way Jaemin blinks a few times and pulls at his shirt. Jeno reaches for the glasses he left on the table and brings Jaemin into focus.

The breath Jeno takes rattles loose in his lungs, but this Jaemin doesn’t break him. Jaemin stands at the corner of the table with his hands now pressed to the top, searching Jeno’s eyes for any number of things.

Jeno decides to smile at him. He has the pleasure of seeing a matching smile ripple into Jaemin’s face with relief, brushing away some of the anxious awkwardness.

“Thirty-one?” Jaemin mouths, looking hopeful, just to confirm, and Jeno laughs. It’s on the border of exhausted and a little unhinged, but Jaemin looks relieved anyway.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Jeno says, breath light in his chest as he slowly leaks the deluge of emotion out through his fingertips. “I wasn’t sure it would happen.”

“Can we sit?” Jaemin asks, eyes wide and swimming a little. Of course he’s overwhelmed—it makes sense, and Jeno knows this stressed him out. “I need to sit. And if you’re okay with it, I—”

“I’ll explain,” Jeno promises.

Jaemin moves for the couch like he’s walking on emotionally thin ice and delicately sits himself down with fidgety hands that he keeps firmly in his lap and away from his face.

Jeno takes a moment to breathe, then sits down on the center cushion, legs crossed and meeting Jaemin eye-to-eye. He still feels shaky and ever so slightly still in shock, but he knows how to feel safe and at ease with Jaemin, and Jaemin deserves an explanation.

“I didn’t tell you back then because I didn’t know how,” Jeno says, “but…how old did I say I was an hour ago?”

Jaemin stares at him, not quite blankly, but not hard either. He pauses, then says, “Twenty-two.”

“And when did I ask you out? When did we start dating?”

Jeno waits, running his hands over his own knees.

Worrying his lip with his teeth, Jaemin says, “When we were twenty-two.”

Jeno takes a deep breath and smiles again, and he can see it visibly put Jaemin at ease—even just a little. “Nine years ago,” Jeno says, “I woke up in our bed.” He points toward their bedroom, but Jaemin doesn’t turn to look. He just stares at Jeno and goes still. “I don’t know what did it or what happened, and I don’t know how it’s possible, but I did. Because I remember meeting you, and I remember you telling me that even at twenty-two, you were in love with me. I got back to my time in the middle of a conversation I didn’t remember starting, and then asked if you were willing to date me.”

His husband is motionless.

 _“I_ woke up this morning in Donghyuck’s bed back in my old apartment in college. In my twenty-two-year-old body.”

Jaemin draws breath, but not to speak, and Jeno has to keep going.

“Again, I don’t know why or how. I don’t think I’m crazy because I don’t know how brains could pull off something like this, but all of that aside,” Jeno says and laughs again because it’s the only breath he has in him right now, and Jaemin looks overwhelmed, “I cannot explain to you what it did to me to see you twenty-two again.”

Jaemin’s mouth opens in wordlessness. His throat works, and Jeno doesn’t know what else to say until Jaemin speaks.

“I want to see you at twenty-two again,” Jaemin says finally, voice wrung-out and halfway to a pout. “In person. You’d be so cute.”

Another laugh rattles through Jeno’s chest, relief stretching through him, and he reaches for Jaemin to close the distance. “I cried,” Jeno admits.

“You’ve cried so much today,” Jaemin protests, sloping back against the arm rest and throw pillow, then opening up for Jeno. He folds himself into Jeno’s embrace, and Jeno can feel his pulse against his lips, pounding. “I can’t handle it.” 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, and despite the situation, he smiles. “I’ve scared you.”

Jaemin takes a long inhale and presses his nose into Jeno’s hair, saying nothing, and kisses his ear.

They lie together for a long time, Jeno slowly relaxing through the stress of piled-on emotion and Jaemin gradually becoming calm. Eventually, Jaemin brings his hand up to brush through Jeno’s hair, down his neck, over his spine. He draws a heart with his fingertip at the small of his back.

“I think you cheated time, Lee Jeno,” Jaemin says, voice soft. “You cheated and found out I loved you before you were supposed to.”

Jeno rumbles a laugh into Jaemin’s shoulder, kissing the skin and reclaiming that overwhelming feeling of gratitude that has rendered him mostly useless this entire morning. “Do you feel betrayed?”

“On behalf of my younger self?” Jaemin hums, a little amusement present, but also that same poutiness. “Yes.”

Jeno squeezed him in his arms and tries not to laugh. “I don’t know where we would be if I hadn’t cheated, Nana.”

 _Not here,_ he thinks. But maybe it would have gone fine. So long as he had Jaemin, he’s sure he would have been fine. And Jaemin swears that he would have been fine even without him, though the Jeno that he is now really doesn’t like that idea.

“Well,” Jaemin whispers, “I’m grateful for your nosy ass.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Jeno laughs, kissing Jaemin’s jaw, then lifting himself up to see his husband’s face. “I didn’t even ask. _You_ were the one who asked if we were dating yet.”

Jaemin, in all his edges and pretty slopes and dark, expressive features, crumples his face in embarrassment and laughs. _“I’m_ the cheater,” he gasps.

 _“You’re_ the cheater,” Jeno confirms, stealing a kiss against Jaemin’s lips, his eyebrows, his hairline, then back to the tip of his nose. “How dare you.”

“I love you,” Jaemin chirps under the affections. “Thank you for doing the impossible, you crazy man, just so we could have this.”

Jeno lays his lips back on Jaemin’s and kisses him slow. As much as he’s able, he inscribes his care in the warmth of his motions, cradling Jaemin’s waist and letting his heart wind up through his throat. “Crazy for you,” he mumbles, hardly removing his mouth. “You’re welcome.”

More than selfish, he’s grateful. He’s so thankful he can have Jaemin and know him, love him and hold him. He never could have known at twenty-two how loving someone—loving Jaemin—would feel after nine years. It’s no honeymoon, but it’s not nothing, either.

He has the privilege of helping Jaemin strive higher, be better, and to support him when he’s down in the bottommost cellar of self-love, wishing he could be more.

He has a home with him, pays the bills with him, argues about work with him and skipping therapy sessions and disagreeing on dog breeds.

He makes love to him, sees him for who he is, knows everything he can be and is still shaken by the heights Jaemin reaches.

Jaemin is flawed, he stumbles, he tears himself apart, and is still learning to see himself through forgiving eyes.

And Jeno loves him.

**Author's Note:**

> A note to Leo, who loved "Waking Up Wrong" deeply and made me think writing a sequel would be a good idea. Thank you, lovely, for your support ♡ It meant (and means) the world.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/speckledsolana)  
> [curiouscat](https://t.co/zW26zmaxzw?amp=1)  
> 


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